Sunday, June 01, 2008
The Crazy Bird Lady

Oh, crap.

I KNEW I should've just taken the 395, it would've taken 15 minutes to get back to college through uni, and now I've wasted the bloody 15 minutes waiting for the 372.

Stupid public transport.

While I spent time at the bus stop whining about how it'd take me twice the time to get home (I didn't actually mind: I love buses and this city so much), I happened to chance upon The Crazy Bird Lady.

She had short, bobbed black hair and I was first alerted to her presence by a giant mob of pigeons. Throwing grain from a huge bag (one of those 20 kg bags of bird seed), CBL walked back and forth, followed by her faithful, grateful flock.

After she'd disposed of the bag, she proceeded to reach into her blue eco bags (4 of them) and started throwing cheese and bacon rolls at her avian audience.

Cheese and bacon rolls?!

Srsly, lady?!

People started taking photos at this point in time, of a small Asian woman with slightly crazy hair and a tortured expression throwing mounds of human food at a bird flock.

While I'd like to think she was simply being a lovely person, or an animal lover, or a bird enthusiast, part of me thinks it goes deeper than that.

See, I used to feed birds too.

Oh, I know, I know, we've heard LOTS about Sana's miserable early school years as the fat lonely kid, WAAH. Whatever, it's all relevant.

Remember? I'd go to the canteen every day at lunch, get myself "auntie, satu french fry dan cili" and spend an extra buck (EXORBITANT, THERE WERE ONLY THREE) on a packet of chicken nuggets.

I did this every day for over three months, 90 bucks just to feed a crappy flock of crappy pigeons. I did it because I was tired of people but couldn't stand being alone anyway.

The fact that this lady ran off, blue eco bags in hand, after her job was done? Vanished without looking, smiling or talking to anyone?

She's tired of people, too. Sick of humanity and sick of interacting with it and sick of being forced to deal with it and its problems.

Because it's humanity, it's society, it's people around her that will call her the crazy bird lady. It's people like us with our screwed up ideas of what constitutes normal that alienate people who want something deeper, something more meaningful.

Once upon a time, a lonely kid fed birds. One day, I'll be brave enough to feed them again. Brave enough to ignore what my moulded brain tells me is socially appropriate. Brave enough to do something JUST because I want to do it.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Mai God So Klevvver Wan!

In Sunday school for kids, you'd always have some very well meaning but slightly condescending adult telling you, "WAAAH, YOU SEE THE STARS IN THE SKY OR NOT? GOD IS SO KLEVERRRRR!"

Clever is the kid who can make carpets with his hands.

Clever is the boy who's memorized all the world capitals.

Clever is Sana when she keeps herself out of trouble.

Clever is Daz when he can multiply 5 digit numbers.

God's not clever.

I'm doing Medicine, and have been for the last 2 months.

I see the way the tibia and fibula are held together with a cross-stitch like syndesmoses that gives it the perfect level of mobility.

I see, under the microscope, millions of erythrocytes suspended in a single drop of blood.

I see leukocytes in phagocytic action, engulfing antigens.

I see how colonies of bacteria, millions of bacteria, can generate from a single swab.

I see how the menstrual cycle is perfectly regulated to allow the follicles to develop, via a complex system of hormone release.

I see how nerves traverse the entire body and how, without looking at the keyboard or thinking about what to type, I can write this blog based on their action.

I see how the heart beats, pumping blood into the aorta and down and up through the vena cavae and into the lungs for oxygenation.

I see how, after 2 years of not playing the piano, my fingers can still play thanks to muscle memory.

I guess what I'm trying to say is......

I think after 7 years of not buying into the childish "my god u noe arh, so klever wan" nonsense (and it WAS), I'm finding God again in a place I can appreciate just how brilliant, how awesome, how unbelievable He really is.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
It May Break My Heart, But I'm Going To Be Me.

And this, love, for your benefit, is who I am.

- I think about my future a lot. I know I'm going to be married before I'm 26 and that I want four kids.

- I don't wear dresses and t-shirts because I've never felt confident enough about my figure to do so, not because I'm that moralistic.

- I make up acronyms on the spot to make people feel foolish WTDU them. (Ummm when they like don't understand, stupid.)

- I love talking to people more than anything in the world, and if it comes off as needy, well then I guess I AM needy.

- I'm actually not, not at all. I can survive on my own for enormously long periods of time, just retreating into myself and contemplating.

- I'm terrified of the following things, in order of potency: 1) Getting fat. 2) Ending up alone. 3) People not liking me. 4) Not being good enough.

- I am extremely attached to both old people and children, and seeing either of them in hardship can bother me for days.

- I love to dance, and I am a passionate dirty dancer. I think it's my inner skank trying to break free of the kurtas.

- I'm still too innocent to mean anything slutty or suggestive by it though.

- I have extremely high standards but I don't feel confident enough for them.

- It doesn't take me long to fall totally in like because I'm ALWAYS on the lookout for The One.

- Paradoxically, I don't BELIEVE in The One: I believe in The One you eventually feel OK settling for.

- I will quite happily eat things off the floor, if there's no obvious dirt on them. If there is, I will just as happily brush it off and maybe rinse it, and I'm good to go.

- My arms are my weakest area, so if you see me in a t-shirt or even more daringly, a sleeveless top, please come up to me and give me a hug: odds are, I need it.

- I come off as desperately try hard and unfunny for the first couple of months, because I'm trying very hard to not hurt you: the brand of humour I reserve for my friends is quick, sharp, cutting and always hilarious. People who never get to know me will ALWAYS know me as unfunny and try hard.

- I once loved my religion. I started disliking it because of its practitioners.

- I was once convinced I'd love said religion again. I'm now not so sure.

- If you tell me your name, I will remember it.

- I think the letters J, A, X and Z are unbelievably sexy.

- I think you'd look stupid bald, but I'm TERRIFIED of saying it because it's for a good cause. But I am a selfish ho.

- I am extremely passive aggressive: if I don't like you, you WON'T KNOW: I'll be subtly mean but then openly nice, and you won't know what to believe.

- I have much more pride than I know what to do with.

- My childlike wonder is beginning to expire and it makes me so very unhappy.

- And here's the weirdest thing: even though I am THE vaguest and THE least "sure" and the most suspicious and the least heart-trusting person in the world....................

.........................I'm somehow certain I'll end up with you in some capacity. Heads up, dumbass! :)

- (I'm abrasive and aggressive when I'm smitten: it's me trying to maintain my acerbic hilarity in the face of infatuation, she that makes a babbling idiot out of the best of us).